Death

It’s difficult to prove the death of something that may or may not have actually existed in the first place. Is the fact that you don’t see it proof that it’s still alive, or that it is now, finally dead, even though you never really saw it alive to know for sure the difference? Either way the Loch Ness Monster is dead. Or not.

And now, please, a moment of silence for our beloved friend and cryptozoological curiosity, Nessie. Lost too soon.

565 A.D. – 2013

While not yet confirmed (much like its very existence in the first place) a “veteran custodian of Loch Ness monster sightings” reports that there have not been any new Nessie sightings in aproximately 18 months, leading to fears that the unthinkable may have befallen the lake’s unrealable resident.

And I agree, it is very upsetting to think that Nessie might be no more. As a fan of cryptozoology, the thought that this majestic imaginary lake dinosaur might somehow be dead is a terrible blow to my crazy pastime.

Fortunately, thrill-seekers can rest easy knowing that the “Loch Ness Monster Roller Coaster” at Busch Gardens Williamsburg is still doing just fine.

Though–and just hear me out–the way I see it, until they find a body, there is absolutely no way to CONFIRM that Nessie is dead. Of course if they did find a body that would have the double whammy benefit of both confirming its death AND its existence in one fell swoop, but that’s beside the point I was hurtling toward.

What I was saying is that it’s just as possible and almost TWICE AS LIKELY that sometime in the night, eighteen months ago, Sasquatch, Chupacabra and the Yeti might have snuck into the loch and smuggled Nessie out, needing her specific skill set for a top secret mission commissioned by MI6, the KGB and the CIA! A deep cover assignment that has to this day kept them all off the radar, leading to these mistaken death fears which only help throw off the suspicion of the sighting custodians and the Ukranian drug lords that they’re working to foil!

I actually have a screen play that goes VERY much along these lines, so if anyone reading this has any friends at Paramount or Universal, give me a call.

The human body is a wondrous, amazing and altogether confusing mechanism. We walk, we talk, we breathe and spit and shit and shout. And then sometimes, every now and then, the human body will surprise us, and what you thought was a prolonged tummy ache was a calcified “stone baby” living in your guts for nearly half a century. The human body is weird like that.

I’ve had to empty the catch bucket next to my desk nine times over the past six hours trying to write this story. and I’m almost certain that I am going to wake up screaming “STONE BABY!” at 4am every morning for the rest of my life. So, you know, fair warning for those who choose to read further: An 84-year-old Brazilian woman has had a dead, calcified fetus living inside her for the last 44 years. Huurgh… No, I’m good. It’s fine… Let’s do this.

Oh god!

The unnamed woman visited a healer almost 4 ½ decades ago suffering pain during her pregnancy. After her apparently successful visit, “her stomach didn’t grow anymore” and “the baby stopped moving”. So, with that being seemingly enough of a resolution to her tummy ache, she then went on to live the rest of her life somehow never noticing or caring that no baby (or remnants thereof) ever appeared to exit her body. I can only guess that her assumption was that it had somehow been dissolved and re-absorbed into her body and was not worth further investigation. Well as it turns out ALMOST THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THAT HAPPENED!

What DID happen is something called “lithopedion”. It’s a rare phenomenon in which a fetus will grow for a period outside of the uterus before eventually dying. The body then, unable to expel this lump of used-ta-baby, will instead calcify it as a means of protection to the rest of the body, resulting in what is known in horror movie pitch meetings as a “stone baby”.

Make it stop!

This rock-solid pre-infant was discovered in this Brazilian woman when, upon a more recent visit to the hospital to investigate “intense stomach pains”, subsequent exploratory X-rays revealed “the face, the bones of the arms, of the legs, the ribs, and the spine” of an elderly, freeloading fetus which had died somewhere between 20 to 28 weeks into gestation, more than 40 years ago.

And now, introduced to something that I never even knew existed and now can’t unknow, we’re left with perhaps the most stomach churning detail of the whole ordeal. The woman is opting not to have her granite un-child removed. Instead choosing to leave her haunted abdomen, chock full of baby corpse…

A facility in Durham, England is ready to turn your last act of selfish global pollution into the greenest of green energies. Why let your rotting remains just disintegrate in the ground, a skeleton in a fine suit and a frilly cushioned box being all lazy and just taking up space as subterranean litter when it could be powering 1,500 television sets for an entire hour!

That’s right, I’ll bet you didn’t even know that when you die and bury your sweet, flammable flesh, you are wasting “as much as 150 kilowatt-hours” of usable body heat?! Well you are, Mr. Thinks My Dumb Dead Body Is So Damned Important.

Bio-fuel is people! It's PEOPLE!

This new and exciting way of making use of your corporeal garbage is coming to the old world because apparently in some parts of Europe the cremation rate is over 90 percent. I imagine that is mostly out of necessity as it’s generally referred to as the old world because people have been dying there for a long time and while digging under existing graves to bury new bodies SOUNDS like the most logical solution in my mind, it has been pointed out on numerous occasions by multiple individuals that my mind don’t work so pleasant extra bucks. So with an estimated (by me) 68% of Europe’s land mass already filled with the plague ridden bodies of Ghost Knights the options for corpse disposal are sort of limited.

While here in the good ol’ USA less than 50% of Patriotic Ameri-deaths result in post mortal immolation. We’ve got plenty of land, generously given to us by the plague ridden bodies of Ghost Indians in which to place the beloved remains of our beloved beloveds. And anyway, we’re Americans, it’s kind of our thing to make sure we waste as much of the planet as possible to make sure Jesus can see how much we’re enjoying ourselves. So don’t worry American dead and dying, this sort of answer isn’t going to come to this side of the pond until we’re already burning enough bodies to make it worth the crematorium’s while.

But that day may be coming. Owner and CEO of Florida based B&L Cremation Systems, operator, cremation engineer and all around fan of ashening the dead, Steve Looker, between mirthless cackles and rubbing his dry, cold hands together in a dark, hollow glee, said. “Over the next 10 years, with the baby boomers coming through, cremation is going to reach 75 to 80 percent. Then, this might be feasible.” Oh, to live your life, excitedly awaiting the mass extinction of a generation as a boon to your bottom line. But, I suppose it’s better than just letting them stack up and smell, so, more power to the creepy bastard wishing death upon millions as soon as possible.

I can’t say which side I come down on the burial vs. cremation subject myself. On one hand I have a place I can call my own for all eternity, or until my head stone is misplaced, or I’m dug up for after-after party necrotic sexy times. And if I’m all still intact, there’s still the chance that I could live again in undead form. While on the other hand, I could be reduced to an easy to carry travel size me. My loved ones wouldn’t have to get in the car and make a big trip of it to visit me, they could just high five the can full of me on the entertainment center. And there’s still the chance that I could maybe have an undead after life, but this one would be in the form of a kick ass Sandmanesque living ash cloud!

I want my tombstone to read "AHHHHH!!!"

It’s kind of a push when I think about it. The only problem I see with being used as an alternative source of energy is that then the hippies would win, and by God, I can’t allow that to happen. So I think the only way I’m going to accept cremation is if it’s going to come by means of me leading police in a high speed pursuit after robbing a whole food grocery outlet, losing control of my stolen electric vehicle and plowing headlong into a gas station in the middle of refueling, taking out the entire city block in a towering ball of fire that can be seen from space…

In the modern world of online dating, and the availability of “adult services” all over the internet, one would think that hookin’ up with someone shouldn’t be too difficult. There are so many ways to go out and find yourself a live warm one to take home with you, and whether that leads to 1st Base action and a kiss on the cheek goodnight, or slammin’ a homerun with two hookers dressed like characters from Hogan’s Heroes feeding you sushi rolls with their baby-oiled feet, there are unlimited numbers of ways to make it happen. Craigslist. Match.com. Swingersspace.com. Christianmingle.com. Hookerswithbabyoiledfeet.com.

Wearing the Hitler stache is gonna cost you extra

You want it, there’s a website for your favorite flavor, and for the right price, it’s yours. Hell, you could even take yourself a shower, put on some big boy/girl clothes and go to a bar, get yourself and a willing participant liquored up and hey, the world is your oyster (on the half shell) ((Aphrodisiac reference, kinda fits)).

So when I read a story about a Russian guy in Russia (is it even Russia anymore?) who was caught with 29 female corpses in his house that he dug up from various cemeteries over the last year, and then dressed them up like dolls, the only question that immediately jumped into my mind was … “Where in the hell did they all sit?”. I mean I’ve got room for about 5 or 6 people on the couch and various chairs, MAYBE 8 or 9 if I use the dining room chairs, and the 4 or 5 people who sit on the floor, I’m good for a strong 13 people max. But 29? That’s a freakin’ wedding reception, I’d have to rent a hall, white plastic chairs, tables, linen and obviously a DJ to entertain those freeloaders.

I don't need no stinkin' drinks ... let's get NASTY !!

Then the second question races in … “Did you get anyone to help?”. Seriously, that’s a lot of labor. Scoping out the cemetery, learning the timing of security, groundskeepers, foot traffic, road traffic, lighting, digging, lifting, cleaning up afterwards, driving them home, hauling them inside without anybody seeing, dressing them like a Madame Alexander, propping them up, making sure they’re comfy. AND THAT’S JUST ONE !!! Now go and repeat that craziness another 28 times? No thank you. I remember how hard it was just to go into my own backyard and pick up dog shit with a hand trowel and a plastic grocery bag.

So hats off to you Anatoly Moskvin, that is some serious dedication and devotion to never being lonely. And it just goes to show that not everybody needs a computer, a website and a credit card to find Mr. or Mrs. Right, just a sturdy shovel and a little bit of elbow grease … just like how our great-grandparents used to do it.

Well thank god THAT’S over … for now anyway. Some federal judge has ruled that the “graphic” images of what smoking will do to you are unconstitutional and go against Big Tobacco’s right to free speech, saying that the pictures are “staged”. So what I’m getting out of this is that since the pictures are in fact not real, then smoking cigarettes doesn’t give you cancer and make you dead. This is great news to all of us religious smokers who just love the way it makes us smell and helps keep our taste buds in check, not to mention all the small children who see the ads for cigarettes at eye

Come to Daddy !!

level in convenience stores.

This is a great day for our constitutional rights !! I mean, what’s next? Forcing breweries to place graphic images on 12 packs of beer of what happens when you drink too much? A picture of a dude with a huge beer belly? A picture of that man/woman that you went home with and what they ACTUALLY looked like the next day? Graphic pictures of drunk driving crashes? That’s just ridiculous … we all know that cigarettes and beer don’t kill people … guns do.

And then what’s next? The desensitizing of these “shocking” pictures? Once we see them hundreds of times a month, they’ll just become normal to us, they won’t “shock” us into not buying these wicked vices that we choose to put in our bodies with our own hard earned money that we make on a bi-monthly basis, these vices that help us deal with the jobs that we have that make us completely stressed out day after day after miserable day working for the man that helps us earn this money that helps us buy these things that assuage our completely broken down spirits so we can cope with waking up the next day and schlepping into the office of your current employment just to do the whole thing over again tonight. We’ll just look at them and say, “hey, that’s uncle Rick”. LET US HAVE OUR CANCER STICKS !! LET US HAVE OUR 12 PACKS OF MEDICINE !! QUIT RUINING EVERY GAWDDAMN THING FOR US FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S F’ING HOLY !!!

The new look of the Happy Meal

So for now, go out and enjoy your cigarettes, drink yourself silly because there’s nothing wrong with it right now until the ruling gets appealed and goes to the Supreme Court. And hopefully nothing comes of it because I’m sure they’ve got an entire ad campaign that they’d love to put on the bags of every McDonald’s and Burger King order.

Well thank god THAT’S over … for now anyway. Some federal judge has ruled that the “graphic” images of what smoking will do to you are unconstitutional and go against Big Tobacco’s right to free speech, saying that the pictures are “staged”. So what I’m getting out of this is that since the pictures are in fact not real, then smoking cigarettes doesn’t give you cancer and make you dead. This is great news to all of us religious smokers who just love the way it makes us smell and helps keep our taste buds in check, not to mention all the small children who see the ads for cigarettes at eye

Come to Daddy !!

level in convenience stores.

This is a great day for our constitutional rights !! I mean, what’s next? Forcing breweries to place graphic images on 12 packs of beer of what happens when you drink too much? A picture of a dude with a huge beer belly? A picture of that man/woman that you went home with and what they ACTUALLY looked like the next day? Graphic pictures of drunk driving crashes? That’s just ridiculous … we all know that cigarettes and beer don’t kill people … guns do.

And then what’s next? The desensitizing of these “shocking” pictures? Once we see them hundreds of times a month, they’ll just become normal to us, they won’t “shock” us into not buying these wicked vices that we choose to put in our bodies with our own hard earned money that we make on a bi-monthly basis, these vices that help us deal with the jobs that we have that make us completely stressed out day after day after miserable day working for the man that helps us earn this money that helps us buy these things that assuage our completely broken down spirits so we can cope with waking up the next day and schlepping into the office of your current employment just to do the whole thing over again tonight. We’ll just look at them and say, “hey, that’s uncle Rick”. LET US HAVE OUR CANCER STICKS !! LET US HAVE OUR 12 PACKS OF MEDICINE !! QUIT RUINING EVERY GAWDDAMN THING FOR US FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S F’ING HOLY !!!

The new look of the Happy Meal

So for now, go out and enjoy your cigarettes, drink yourself silly because there’s nothing wrong with it right now until the ruling gets appealed and goes to the Supreme Court. And hopefully nothing comes of it because I’m sure they’ve got an entire ad campaign that they’d love to put on the bags of every McDonald’s and Burger King order.

Before we get started let me just say I am not mocking the death of a thirteen year old boy here. I would just like to make that perfectly clear right away. I don’t know how many times just this week I’ve been wrongfully accused of celebrating teen deaths and I’m sick of it. It is irresponsible and hurtful to my loyal fan base of thirteen year old boys. I would never wish ill on any of their cherubic little faces. Now, with that little bit of house keeping out of the way.

A thirteen year old Pittsburgh boy was murdered by his own stupidity and his parents’ neglect.

The headline reads: “Teen dies after smoking synthetic pot”. At first glance, that’s horrible. The death of a teen is rarely hysterical and that he was killed by some sort of Franken-dope created in a lab specifically to murder thirteen year olds with no parental supervision just makes it all the more tragic. The only problem with this headline is that it’s entirely false.

The subhead sheds slightly more light on the what might be slightly closer to the truth: “13-year-old boy sustained chemical burns to his lungs after smoking from plastic candy dispenser”. Ah, well, okay, now we’re getting somewhere slightly less sensational aren’t we?

Then as we get into the poorly written body of the “story” we discover: “The boy smoked the fake marijuana out of a plastic candy dispenser and suffered chemical burns to both lungs. He was put on a respirator in June and had a double lung transplant in September. The boy’s mother says anti-rejection drugs he’s taken since the transplants weakened his immune system and made him unable to fight off a recent infection.”

So, now we have slightly more information here. Still not much in the way of reporting, but at the very least it is more information. With these new tid bits, we can slightly modify the sensational headline to read “Teen who inhaled burning plastic dies of infection following double lung transplant”.

This fake drug has killed more teens than polio and sadness combined! True? It must be, I just reported it!

I actually did some research on this one, something I often, plainly refuse to do, and found another article about this kid. The second article goes into a little more detail, saying that the boy “injured his lungs in August after smoking a substance known as K2.” mentioning no where in THIS story that he smoked it through the thin flimsy plastic neck slot of Batman villain Two Face (allegedly) and that “Shortly after smoking the drug, the teen developed nausea, a full body rash, headaches and high fever. His father said the substance caused a chemical burn in his son’s lungs.”

All of this forced me to do further research, which only served to anger up my blood some more. In looking up the side effects or potential risks of “synthetic marijuana” I found that the products, “often sold as “herbal incense” and smoked like traditional marijuana, can produce seizures, hallucinations, tremors, paranoia, convulsions, high blood pressure and rapid heart rate.” And while very few of these are good side effects, exactly none of them are what dad said happened to his boy.

Then, after this parentally neglected 13 year old got sick from inhaling a PEZ dispenser, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed a bill outlawing synthetic marijuanas.

All of this leaves me with a lot of “Why?”s. Why does everyone believe that baby-juana did something specifically to this kid that it’s never done to anyone else ever. Why, when this child’s actual cause of death was hospital infectionitis brought on by the total removal and replacement of his entire respiratory system in a building literally slopping over with infectiousness, is every news source saying that bullshit fake weed put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger now he’s dead? Why are “news” people just allowed to assign blame to a substance with no actual proof and get away with it. Saying “Teen dies after smoking synthetic pot” in relation to this story is only slightly more crazy than if, say, I were to put on a pair of my favorite asbestos gloves, massage the mucusy orifice of your choice, and several months later you were to die of mecca pneumonia due to your body rejecting your new radio controlled bionic sphincter valve and the headline reading “Blog reader dies after loving, tender, attentive butt hole fingering”.

"Riddle me this! When is a throat chute like a water pipe?" "Oh please shut up."

Now, don’t get me wrong, none of this is meant to be in defense of synthetic marijuana or a condemnation of robotic poopers. I personally think these “K-2” and “Spice” and what have you are cute and dumb and mostly harmless as long as you ask your parent’s permission before sucking it through a fiery Lego. What bothers me is the lazy, irresponsible nature of this reporting and how nobody will call these people out on their bullshit. And please know, if it does in fact turn out that this kid’s death was caused specifically and solely by the proper, appropriate implementation of this legal product, then I’m just a bigger asshole than most give me credit for and I’m sorry for ever questioning the validity of this third hand hearsay being passed off as investigative journalism. But if I’m not: if I’m right… Well, we’ll never hear about it. Because first people would have to admit that they’re wrong, which they won’t. And death not being the result of evil future drugs sent back through time to kill our children just doesn’t fit the narrative being built by those that don’t like this product for what ever reason. But just because something’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s good for you either, I mean, take cigarettes or having children that you have no intention of properly raising, but just because you don’t like a thing, doesn’t mean it murdered somebody.

God damn, this has been a week. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go take a nap, because in my dreams I’m an 8 time gold medal Olympic vampire puncher with the uncanny psychic ability to sense when and where lesbian sex is transpiring and a magical doorway that can take me there. Then I’m gonna wake up Monday hoping that most of the sharp objects in the apartment are still up too high for me to reach them…

See you then, if any of us make it there without being killed by something whose fault it isn’t.

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